Canadian Senate: Silly Talk About Principles Earns Scorn For Canada

Incidentally, this article is another example of Canada’s foreign policy people being so different from the domestic policy folks that we’re beginning to wonder if they represent the same country.

Emphasis ours:

Canadian diplomats told the Senate committee Canada is doing its best to “leap into the breach” to work with moderates and reach across regional divides to reach greater consensus on resolutions. The goal, the Senate committee heard, is to get individual council members to vote on an issue-by-issue basis, rather than putting the priority on voting as a bloc.

However, the Senate committee also found that Canada’s “adoption of a strong ‘position of principle'” on a number of key issues, including on Israel, “has earned it criticism from many, as well as an increasingly marginalized position among nations.”

“Canada’s voting pattern on all resolutions concerning Israel have clearly marked the Canadian government as standing on its own,” the Senate committee report reads. “Diplomats in Geneva pointed out that Canada has now voted four times against resolutions on its own while Canada’s traditional allies have instead generally chosen to abstain from the vote.”